The shortcomings of the scientific method [metaphysics]

[ZenMonkeyNZ]

If the "philosophy of science" includes any number of views on what the "limitations of science" are, then how can the statement " the limitations of science are well understood in the philosophy of science" be an accurate representation what the philosophy of science is?

That's like asking how can the statement "bananas are known to be a kind of fruit" be an accurate representation of what fruit is? Your question doesn't make sense, but I suspect that is just a diction issue. I assume you mean simply this:

If the "philosophy of science" includes any number of views on what the "limitations of science" are, then how can the statement "the limitations of science are well understood in the philosophy of science" be accurate?

Statements of this kind only have the possibility of being accurate from within a chosen framework. For example, given there are varying philosophical views as to what constitutes science, your statement cannot be strictly accurate either: "Science is a process of systematic collection and compilation of knowledge for the purpose of sustaining and enhancing the life of beings with a conceptual consciousness."

Such statements only have the possibility of being accurate from within given frameworks. The interesting questions revolve around whether or not such statements are accurate within the chosen framework, whether or not the chosen framework is consistent and well-developed, whether or not initial premises and axioms are epistemologically compelling, etc.

All such statements about science (or any philosophy) only have meaning from within chosen frameworks. You cannot avoid this.

[Plasmatic]

Plasmatic wrote:
If the "philosophy of science" includes any number of views on what the "limitations of science" are, then how can the statement " the limitations of science are well understood in the philosophy of science" be an accurate representation what the philosophy of science is?

That's like asking how can the statement "bananas are known to be a kind of fruit" be an accurate representation of what fruit is? Your question doesn't make sense, but I suspect that is just a diction issue. I assume you mean simply this:

If the "philosophy of science" includes any number of views on what the "limitations of science" are, then how can the statement "the limitations of science are well understood in the philosophy of science" be accurate?

Statements of this kind only have the possibility of being accurate from within a chosen framework. For example, given there are varying philosophical views as to what constitutes science, your statement cannot be strictly accurate either: "Science is a process of systematic collection and compilation of knowledge for the purpose of sustaining and enhancing the life of beings with a conceptual consciousness."

You dont understand that your initial statement was exactly analagous to the first iteration which you admit does not make sense. The second iteration only makes the omitted part implicit. You do not understand that this disagreement is over the general nature of the topic of POS. Your statement was a "within the framework of x" statement about an "any framework" topic. Therefore your statement does not make any sense. Is your capacity for vision exhausted by what you are seeing at any given moment?

Zen said:

Such statements only have the possibility of being accurate from within given frameworks. The interesting questions revolve around whether or not such statements are accurate within the chosen framework, whether or not the chosen framework is consistent and well-developed, whether or not initial premises and axioms are epistemologically compelling, etc.

All such statements about science (or any philosophy) only have meaning from within chosen frameworks. You cannot avoid this.

You are here denying the existence of the very thing that makes any utterance possible, i.e. the unit status of concepts.. You are denying the possesion of the ability to state " I will regard anything that is no more than X and no less than Y as a member of class C". Such a mindset is concrete bound and stuck on the level of percepts of particulars. You "cannot avoid" making such a statement and making a category error.

Just what do you think you are doing when you say "any philosophy"? What about the concept color? Do I only have the ability to mean a particular instance of color? One cannot even make the statement without denying what they are claiming. ....

a)."What's your favorite color?"

b)."You mean blue?"

a). "I dont know. You tell me"

b). "Tell you what?"



The difference between my statement about what science is and your initial one is that I did not attribute my own particular philosophy of science to the general open ended topic of POS.

That's why I said :

I beg to differ based on my own answers to the questions of epistemology broadly and the querry "What is science?" in particular, and both of our answers are species of the genus "philosophy of science"....

If the subject is taught from the perspective you hold no one would learn anything but what the teacher holds to be the "standard" view. Unfortunately this is one of the things that happens in schools today.

The ironic thing is the very same thing happened from the early beginnings of this thread:

By using logic, it is clear that the non-physical world may be real, but can never be described with the scientific method.

Depends on who's scientific method.

[ZenMonkeyNZ]

You do not understand that this disagreement is over the general nature of the topic of POS. Your statement was a "within the framework of x" statement about an "any framework" topic. Therefore your statement does not make any sense.

Your extra-framework perspective can tell you nothing useful, except to be aware of different frameworks.

If you treat the philosophy of science as an "any framework" topic and complain about someone making a statement from a conceptual framework, you are engaging in a kind of propositional tautology. From an extra-framework point of view, no statement from within a conceptual framework can be strictly accurate. The only thing this tells you is that there are different points of view. It doesn't tell you anything useful about the value of a given statement.

Is your capacity for vision exhausted by what you are seeing at any given moment? . . . If the subject is taught from the perspective you hold no one would learn anything but what the teacher holds to be the "standard" view. Unfortunately this is one of the things that happens in schools today.

I absolutely agree about schooling (and this is why dialectics is important). However, working from within a given framework does not exhaust what you can learn or understand. As long as you are aware of your framework you do not need to be restricted by it. This is why I enjoy older scientific treatise. Many of the scientists of the past (although definitely not all) began by defining their premises/axioms, defining terms, and building a conceptual structure. They understood they were creating a framework to work within. These days, conceptual frameworks are usually just taken for granted and not explored. And this comes back to my original statement about scientists not engaging in the philosophy of science – they do not set up and explore their conceptual framework first, and hence often do not understand the limitations of their thinking. When you engage in the philosophy of science then the limitations of your methodology are well understood (or should be).

[Plasmatic]

Zen said:

If you treat the philosophy of science as an "any framework" topic and complain about someone making a statement from a conceptual framework, you are engaging in a kind of propositional tautology.

Your still not getting it. Im getting bored with that.

First, all truths are tautalogical in a non vicious circularity. (too much to explain here) What you ar claiming of me is the vicious kind of contradictiory circularity.

Second, There is a difference between"making a statement" about an "any framework" topic that affirms the open ended nature of that topic and making the claim that an "any framework topic" is limited by and subject to the standard of the particular "framework" I profess.

Its very simply and these two statements express the difference you keep glossing over.

1). "Those who have a valid philosophy of science understand well what the limitiations of the scientific method are"

2). "In the philosophy of science, the limitations of the scientific method are well understood"

If I objected to the first kind of statement while maintaining my position on the open endedness of the topic then I would be guilty of the type of tautalogy you refer to.


Zen said:

I absolutely agree about schooling[....]However, working from within a given framework does not exhaust what you can learn or understand. As long as you are aware of your framework you do not need to be restricted by it. This is why I enjoy older scientific treatise. Many of the scientists of the past (although definitely not all) began by defining their premises/axioms, defining terms, and building a conceptual structure. They understood they were creating a framework to work within. These days, conceptual frameworks are usually just taken for granted and not explored.

I agree with the above and it is consistent with what I have maintained in this thread....


Zen said:

And this comes back to my original statement about scientists not engaging in the philosophy of science – they do not set up and explore their conceptual framework first, and hence often do not understand the limitations of their thinking. When you engage in the philosophy of science then the limitations of your methodology are well understood (or should be).

This is not analogous to what you said previously. All of your subsequent arguments betray this. It's not crawfish season Zen....

Again, I ask for an example of what you are and were referring to as a "limitation". (from either a "the", or, a "your" POS view.)

[ZenMonkeyNZ]

Your still not getting it. Im getting bored with that

Yeah, it can be frustrating if you feel you are talking past someone. Hopefully the following makes my position clear enough. I won't engage in this specific line of discussion any more after that.

Again, I ask for an example of what you are and were referring to as a "limitation". (from either a "the", or, a "your" POS view.)

If you want to say something about the limitations of scientific methodology from an extra-framework perspective (your the POS), the only thing one can say is that you are limited by your chosen framework. That's where you start in any epistemology. We’ve covered that previously.

Also previously stated, I'm not going to lay out a specific conceptual ground-work in a post – that's too superficial. I am working on that as a separate project, however. One of the aims is to make the limitations clear. People can then argue against the foundations of the framework, its consistency, and the application of it, if desired.

Zen said:

And this comes back to my original statement about scientists not engaging in the philosophy of science – they do not set up and explore their conceptual framework first, and hence often do not understand the limitations of their thinking. When you engage in the philosophy of science then the limitations of your methodology are well understood (or should be).

This is not analogous to what you said previously. All of your subsequent arguments betray this.

Really? I think you are reaching.

This is what I said originally: ”In the philosophy of science the limitations of science are well understood. It is simply that most scientists and laypeople never learn what these are or else fail to take them seriously. Science is a philosophical framework. We just need to make sure we use our mental tools correctly.” How is this not consistent with saying people: “do not set up and explore their conceptual framework first, and hence often do not understand the limitations of their thinking. When you engage in the philosophy of science then the limitations of your methodology are well understood”? Is it this . . .

2). "In the philosophy of science, the limitations of the scientific method are well understood"

So you are basically stuck on the word “the” and your perceived implication of prescriptive philosophy. You are just asking for semantic clarification. Yes, I could change that to something like: “Given a valid philosophy of science, the limitations of the scientific method are well understood”, as you suggest. This is pretty nit-picky, though, as another poster pointed out. I could just as easily say: read the original statement carefully. Saying, as I do, that science is a philosophical framework implies that one works within a framework when talking about science. If you engage in the philosophy of science you are exploring your framework. In doing so the limitations of science (your framework) will be understood.

I really don’t see that there is any fundamental disagreement.

If anyone is interested I'll post a link once the first stages of the philosophy of science project are online (probably mid next year at the earliest).

[Plasmatic]

Zen said:

So you are basically stuck on the word “the” and your perceived implication of prescriptive philosophy. You are just asking for semantic clarification.

No I'm not just asking, I am convinced of what you meant.

Rhetorical technique imminent:

Your in a grocery store in the fruit and vegetable section. An armed robber grabs you and holds a gun to your head and demands of the store clerk, "you have 5 seconds to hand me the banana and any questions will result in Zen's death!" as he points to the pile of bananas in front of him. Your telling me that this statement is not different in any significant way than, "you have 5 seconds to hand me a banana and any questions will result in Zen's death!"

[Solar]

Why are you people discussing nonexistents?

Although several Google hits can be found for “philosophy of science” depending upon who is doing the talking there is no such thing:

Speaking to Google’s Zeitgeist Conference in Hertfordshire, the author of 'A Brief History of Time' said that fundamental questions about the nature of the universe could not be resolved without hard data such as that currently being derived from the Large Hadron Collider and space research. “Most of us don't worry about these questions most of the time. But almost all of us must sometimes wonder: Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead,” he said. “Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.” – Stephen Hawking tells Google ‘philosophy is dead’

How can there be a “philosophy of science” when one of the emperors has declared that ‘philosophy is dead’? By fiat the concept of a “philosophy of science” has been rendered a contradiction of terms or oxymoron.

There are no bananas.

[Plasmatic]

Edit: please delete.